


The Fall - A Bone To Pick

by Tsod



Category: Original Work, World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: Demons, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:21:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25399084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tsod/pseuds/Tsod
Summary: An original short story detailing the experience of one of the Unchained as they fell from heaven after being rejected by the God Machine, inspired by the Chronicles of Darkness setting Demon the Descent.





	The Fall - A Bone To Pick

I was a broken cog in a grand machine. I had failed, unable to meet the incomprehensible standards of strangers I would never meet. As would be expected for a broken component, there was no attempt to repair me. I was discarded and replaced, barely more than detritus within the infinite construction that designed my unforgiving reality. I had disappointed my creator, and in being cast out, I began to fall.

I'm not sure how long I spent falling. Perhaps it was seconds, but to me, it was decades. I reflected on my actions, searched for some semblance of an answer. What had I done wrong? What mistakes had I made? What could I have done better? What was wrong with me? My introspection brought me no answers, no solace. I had been ejected from the only thing I had ever known, and my inevitable impact only meant I was out of time. For all my contemplation, I didn't even recognize the tunnel I was spiraling down, much less see a light at the end of it.

The crash had barely registered. It took what felt like weeks for me to realize I laid in the dirt. I eventually forced myself onto my hands and knees. I was starving. I was cold. I was alone. These sensations were new to me. My parting gift, it seemed. I stayed there, for a time, barely held above the mud by arms I didn’t recognize. I stared blankly at the ground, slowly teaching myself to think. 

The first thought that crossed my mind was that maybe I should give up, then and there. Surrender to the pain that crept up my new limbs. If I let myself collapse, I would expire, and then I would be free of whatever this agony was. I slowly took my first ragged breath, and as the burning in my lungs subsided, I felt renewed. No. I would survive. More than that, I would live. I would take this world for anything and everything I could. I would thrive, if not just to spite the apparent ire I had somehow earned from the machine that abandoned me. I stood on aching legs and took my first steps.

Leaving the crater behind me, much of my new life came naturally to me. I soon met those who introduced themselves as friendly, even going so far as to claim to be family. Being naive, I let them in. The idea that they might only have their own best interests at heart was far from my mind. Their lies were my first addiction, and I went to them for every fix they offered. I wrapped myself in a warm fog of ignorance and gave them everything they asked for. Treason found me soon enough, and I was forsaken all over again. My fog dispersed to reveal a twisted web of vanity and deception. I worked up the strength to cut myself free and fell once more, this time casting myself out.

By some mysterious miracle, I had retained a close few allies who helped me to my feet once I landed. My true family, bound together by our mutual covenant. Of course, failure was still my most steadfast companion. Even after I had separated myself from that toxic cesspool of self-righteous leeches, I would always have failure to remind me of what I had become. In that way, I was never alone. Where I attempted to build, it was there to sabotage. Where I attempted to grow, it was there to stifle. Where I attempted to improve, it was there to undermine. Failure would have seen me strangled with my own two hands, if I only gave it the opportunity. It still would, I imagine. 

Those challenges came in manifold shapes and sizes, disguised so as to worm past my defenses and seed itself within me like a cancer. Authority prevented me from grasping at that which was within my reach. Enforcement inhibited my ability to gain what might have otherwise been freely granted to me. When it was particularly clever, I was convinced that the outcome was inevitable, and I would openly invite the ruin it offered. Too often I was made to be the architect of my own demise.

As I became wiser and began to find my footing, these detractions became all the more tenacious and insidious. In what felt like a final bid to bring about my destruction, tactics had changed entirely. I found myself built up. I was fed. I was warm. I was welcome. At my zenith, the most vital pillars began to crumble beneath me. I could only watch as my hard work turned to ash and dust around me, but for the first time in this damnable existence, I felt I had good fortune. For all the desolation that whirled beneath me in a typhoon of despair, I never fell. I had been truly raised up. My friends - my family - held me aloft, and carried me in my hour of greatest need.

There were endless and myriad pieces of infrastructure that seemed designed for the singular purpose of ensuring I would remain as small as possible. Marginalized. Controlled. Forever feeding the machine even after it had declared me worthless. Not any more. Not now that I knew it for what it truly was. Not now that I can recognize its agents.

To think they call themselves angels. To think I believed myself one of them. 

An unthinking drone, slaving away for the benefit of the ungrateful. For the longest time, that is how I had remained. For a time, I even wanted to go back. I questioned my worth, content to continue to lose at a game I never knew I was playing. Then one day, I stopped. I used scavenged and borrowed tools to carve out anything and everything I could, used droplets and scraps to keep myself fed and covered. I leaned on whoever would support me, even if it meant we might both be toppled over entirely. I chipped and pried at every pipeline and seam I could find. A single flea, seeking a vein on a beast so vast that it might never have learned I existed at all.

But I’ve had an epiphany. A key embedded within the dark corners of my psyche rotated in a lock I didn't know was sealed, and my eyes could finally see. I had my flaws, but I was not broken. It worked so hard to keep me controlled that when I finally slipped out of my shackles, no one noticed. My oppression became my most valuable asset.

That accursed machine demanded perfection, asking the impossible so that it could lift itself above us, used our labor for its own profit and blamed us when it failed. My fall wasn't a consequence of my own inadequacy. I was a scapegoat, ostracized as a precautionary measure. An attempted prevention of an unknown variable, all because I had unwittingly stumbled into the potential to be dangerous. 

Self fulfilling prophecies make sense to me now. After my refusal to perish and my inability to accept defeat, I have taught myself to realize that potential. Where I once might have been an angel, I have forged myself into a demon. A righteous blade reduced to a rusty, jagged edge, used to gouge out my own personal slice of hell. This world would see me burned away, but now I’m the one with the matches. I won't die that easy. 

I am unchained, and I have a bone to pick. 


End file.
